Once upon a time when my guild was raiding Icecrown Citadel back in Wrath, we had a few players who were notorious at making excuses for sudden AFK's or calling off. It wasn't the first time I'd heard of this however -- previous guilds had members that also used any excuse in the book to take a break. One raider in an earlier guild I was in was notorious for screwing up achievements for the guild. After wiping our raid for the umpteenth time in the middle of an extremely difficult achievement, he promptly typed into raid chat that he had to go next door and deliver his neighbor's baby.

Now you would think this was ridiculous enough on its own, but he then made a long, detailed, thought-out post on the guild forums about how he was fine and so was the neighbor and she had a little boy and he was just beautiful ... he waxed on and on and on. Someone asked him to post a picture of the child, at which point he promptly made some excuse about scheduling and quietly left the guild. For the next few months, anyone going AFK would blurt "AFK-having-baby" in vent as fast as they could and crack everyone up.

Players all have their own reasons for going AFK, or even calling off to a raid. But sometimes the excuses are just that -- excuses. And that's where the Warcraft player base seems to shine in creativity. Assisting with childbirth has to be the one of the toppers on my list, right up there with the guild member that went AFK to answer the door with a gun (I ... never really did find out the details on that one, but I don't think I really wanted to know), and "The pool is on fire." So let's hear it guys -- what are the best excuses you've ever heard for calling off or sudden AFK's?

As a PvP player, I'm very aware of the constant complaints that one class or another is overpowered, or OP as the popular jargon calls it. One moment it's feral druids, the next it's rogues, then mages, then you throw a legendary staff into the mix and all of a sudden, out of nowhere it's balance druids and shadow priests!

But then, once you start to play one of those apparently OP classes, you suddenly realise what they're up against to achieve their OP state, and you might begin to realise how to counter their moves, and suddenly you're back on what feels like a far more level playing field with that class, but a whole bunch of other ones are OP.

And the notion of an overpowered class can translate into PvE as well, just as nicely. Some healers have it easier than others, some DPS might too, some tanks have more in their toolkits or different abilities that cater better to some situations than others.

So, that being said, what is the most overpowered class in the game? Are there genuine imbalances at this late stage of the expansion? Or are things just ticking along nicely? My nomination would probably be either mages or rogues from a PvP standpoint. Both have high burst DPS and a good amount of crowd control, which can be a pretty nasty combination to come up against. In battlegrounds, I might change my response to paladins, particularly healers. They have so, so many get-out-of-jail-free cards! And in PvE, hmm, much more tricky. I would say that Blood DKs are in a really good place right now. And perhaps arcane mages -- it feels like their relatively simple rotation ought not to yield such high DPS!

What about you? What do you think? And tell me, how many of you think that the class you play as a main or second character is completely overpowered. Is the grass truly always greener?

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The average beta tester in the Mists beta sees fun glitches all the time, some cooler than others. The recently rectified flying glitch in the beta was one of the best; I loved swimming through the air and getting a rare bird's-eye view of the new continent. Of course, it's all fixed up now, and there's no more air swimming to be had. Frankly, the current glitch where Earth Shield isn't consumed by damage is way less fun!

Being a PvPer, I've occasionally experienced the glitch in Ring of Valor where you fall through the floor of the arena and are immediately portaled back up to near your starting room. I even have one occurence on video, which is fun, with the Skype track paying homage to my immense confusion.

The header image is also a PvP glitch screenshot, believe it or not, from my PvPing priesty friend, the lovely @ameurling. She was doing some 2v2 in Dalaran Sewers and got feared through the wall into what she dubbed the Twilight Zone. This is what Azeroth looks like beyond the conventional world -- a gray space with an expansive, star-speckled sky. And I reckon this is a pretty darn cool glitch. Unfortunately, Alex couldn't get back into Dalaran Sewers -- you win some, you lose some!

So tell me, what glitch have you seen, experienced, heard of, or heard tell of? Is it cool? Is it cooler than Alex's accidental portal from Dalaran Sewers into the Twilight Zone? Tell me all about it.

I recently wrote a Breakfast Topic about your WoW Zone, where I asked you about your playing space. As I keep saying, I read all the comments on Breakfast Topics I write, and this time, one caught my eye in my eternal search for more Breakfast Topics.

Commenter Mix had assumed from that BT's title that it would be about what WoW zone you would craft in the game if you had a free rein to do whatever you liked. What a great question! Mix reckoned a zone that would be "an addition to the Goblin Starting Area or the Darkmoon Faire ... a rickety run down amusement park taken over by Gnolls or Troggs or Undead ..."

This sounds fantastic. I love the dark, eerie feel of the Darkmoon Faire -- in fact, I find myself far more drawn to shady, spooky zones than to happy, sunny ones like the plains of Mulgore. After massive overexposure to Firelands, I'm really not down with fiery zones, and I find forested zones a bit dull. The creeping blackness of the Sha in the Mists beta looks great, though; I like its incongruity in the lush world of Pandaria.

I also love snowy zones -- I like how your tracks remain in the snow -- so I reckon I'd want to create something like Darkshire but in a snowy area, with dark, greenish-blue tones and ghostly figures in a frozen world. It would be like Narnia might look if the Ice Queen had her wicked way!

What about you? If you could create a WoW zone from scratch, what would you make? The sky's the limit, and it definitely doesn't have to be inspired by existing zones. Go wild!

Well, come on, dear reader, you can't pretend you haven't thought it yourself. This is a kind of desert island discs-style question. You can only pick one ability from the game, so what will it be? What WoW ability would you have in reality?

I thought I knew the answer to this question pretty immediately: my Albino Drake, of course! It's miraculously summoned from nowhere; you hop on its back, and you fly away! It's magical, so it doesn't need feeding, and you don't have to pay for petrol or insurance or anything like that.

But then I started imagining what it would actually be like, and I think I changed my mind. For starters, if you didn't know, I live in the U.K. That's not an abbreviation of a little-known state, no -- I mean merrie olde England. And, if you hadn't heard, the U.K. is in a bit of a drought at the moment. I'm saying this with my tongue firmly in my cheek, as although we're officially in a drought, this has been the rainiest month since, well, for a really long time. How many flying mounts can you think of with roofs? Yeah.

And flying mounts seem not to have seatbelts of any kind. I don't know about you, but perching atop a magical dragon's shoulders while dodging 747s sounds like something I'd want more safety measures for than my ability to grip with my knees. Also, how fast exactly is 310%? Say I can run at 6 mph. This is purely hypothetical, but let's say that. 310% is 18.6 mph. That's pretty darn slow. Maybe I don't need a seatbelt after all ...

So since I apparently have a preoccupation with travel, I am going to go for a hearthstone. Think about it: You can place it anywhere there's an innkeeper to travel there in a few seconds. Sure, you might need to work your way back to where you came from, but the ability to get home from far-flung places or near to home? Amazing! Or if you have loved ones on distant-ish shores, like I do, you could put it in their local inn and be on their doorstep in moments.

What's your nomination? It could be a spell, an item, a mount, a proc -- anything at all. My only demand is that you also tell me why!

Let's face it -- some spells have it and some spells don't. With all the excitement surrounding the potential for warlocks to get some kick-ass green fire in Mists, I thought it was about time to start thinking through what were some of the most awesome-looking spell effects in the game right now, before warlocks start stealing all the thunder. I'm not even going to start talking about that glyph that makes your Dreadsteed run on water!

Anyway, glyph envy aside, let's consider the contenders. The header image is a pretty good clue here -- I love the look of a Frostfire Bolt! The blue frostbolt encased in fire is a seriously lovely effect. But I do think there are other abilities that rank very high. Penance, for example, has a really cool-looking effect. The bolt itself isn't that amazing, but the way it makes those spiralling paths toward its target is very pretty indeed. I also think priests have a damn fine Divine Aegis bubble right now. What else? Well, Chaos Bolt looks great. That little face -- I love it!

I sense melee players are feeling rather unloved. Hmmm, tricky. I do think the paladin Avenging Wrath wings are pretty sweet, especially when coupled with a Badge of Dominance's red effect. A cool effect doesn't have to be a traveling effect, of course, and I think the DK Anti-Magic Zone looks pretty great too.

I remain undecided about my favorite, although I am leaning toward the Frostfire Bolt. (There's a reason it's in the header, after all.) So persuade me! Throw your vote into the ring. Do you agree with me, or am I completely wrong? I'm often completely wrong, you know. It happens a lot. What's your choice for the best-looking spell effect in WoW?

One of the things I like best about WoW is how almost all of its spells require some kind of judgment when you use them. Oh my, did I just make an amazing paladin joke? Well, not intentionally.

Let's take Lay on Hands as an example, shall we? As the astute reader will observe from the header image, it's an instant-cast, freakin' huge heal. I don't know off-hand of any other heal in the game that will provide you with 262,444 HP at the drop of a hat. My paladin is a tank, so "an amount equal to your maximum health" is fairly substantial, and I refer to it as healing my fail. I messed up? Oh, it's OK, I can fix that. But it has a 7-minute cooldown (with the glyph) and puts Forbearance on the target. Used it when you didn't really need to (like when you had a set of priest wings on you)? Now you have to wait another seven minutes, thanks to your itchy trigger finger. Nice work, cowboy.

But I still think Lay on Hands is a contender for best spell. Particularly for a tank, it's a pretty awesome cooldown. You can reset your health instantly (debuffs considered, of course) -- or indeed, anyone else's. Not many people (apart from perhaps other tanks) are likely to have more health than you. But (and it's a big but), Lay on Hands can't be used in Arena. This is bad. Very bad. Well, actually, it's quite good, really. Imagine if it were useable ...

So my surprise entry for best spell in the game, coming from way back in the field, is Leap of Faith. It doesn't have inherent downsides like Lay on Hands, but it requires good judgment. Sure, there are simple cases when it's a good idea, like when someone's standing in bad, but use it to interrupt an arcane mage's Evocation and there'll be trouble. Grab a melee player in Arena just as they're about to take down an opponent? Bad times.

I had a bit of trouble thinking of ideas for best spell in the game. I'm sure you won't, lovely, knowledgeable people. So tell me, what's the best spell in the game? And why?

So, ladies and gentlemen, the clue's in the name, as ever with Breakfast Topics. Today, just for variety, I'm asking you all to take a step out of the virtual and talk about the real for a second. Tell us all about your WoW zone! Where do you play? What do you play on? What are the vitals that you have to have nearby? I'm not looking for /flexing about processors and graphics cards; we're not trying to keep up with the Joneses here. What I want to know is more of the mundane facts.

You can see from the header image that I play on a laptop. Yes, yes, I know, but I like the portable nature of it! I can move around and play slouched on the sofa one evening or sitting up at my desk the next -- even outdoors, if the weather permits. And I can take the game with me if I'm away! You'll note that I'm a fan of the wired mouse -- I've had way too many batteries die on wireless ones -- and my new, beloved headset perched on the speakers goes right over my ears. Way more comfortable than on-ear ones!

You may also be able to make out the kettle, although my camera's not all that. Tea is a vital component of my gameplay. I take it black, no sugar, so a kettle is all I need. There's a stack of Post-it notes for key things I need to remember; the most recent one reads "Aimed Shot, you pillock." I love playing at this desk. You can't really see it, but I have a fab view of the garden and some curious dogs who don't really understand why I keep telling them I'm hexed.

So tell me about your WoW zone. Laptop? Desktop? Wired? Wireless? Desk or sofa? Or somewhere else? Headset or desktop mic? Room with a view, or distraction-free corner? Kettle or fridge? Or neither?